miller's crossing

This is a story idea that I have about mix tapes.

It really has to do with the fact that my car, that I don't drive very often, has a cassette tape player. I really love that it has a cassette player and not a CD player. So, when I'm driving all over town running errands, I've been listening to old (and one new) mix tapes. These tapes haven't really been in circulation, but over the past year and a half as I've moved out of and sold a house, I unearthed several old mix tapes that friends had made for me and a couple I had made for myself.

School's started and I’ve got lots of reading to do for classes. Fortunately, I spent my summer reading (mostly) pleasurable novels. Intentionally or not, two related themes surfaced in my choices: marriage problems and women’s coming of age.

Today, I walked into the bookstore of the college where I'm now working to find a book in which I have a chapter. It was the first time I'd seen the book. What a happy surprise ... and somehow a strange vindication.

 

Before blogging and before everyone had cell phones, I went to college in Portland, OR. It was 1988. I was 25 pounds heavier, scared of boys (and a lot of girls), and desperate for friends. First thing I learned: having two thousand miles between me and anyone who knew me felt really good. There is a great deal of freedom in anonymity. In school, I was mostly an academic failure. But I had friends; fell in love with Portland, the ocean and my bike; played lots of music; and learned to party like the rockstar I wanted to be. It was my first big step towards becoming my current self.

My former colleagues at the Center for Media and Democracy have released their new book The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq.

There's even a video to promote it. I did some research for the book. It's good stuff. Check it out.

tulip shoots next to house

Let's seem how well I can do this.... I had a dream this morning in which I was reading a long magazine article written by a woman who is older than me. It was very good and I was enjoying it a lot, although I can't now remember much what it was about. But I remember this: I came to a part in the article where she returns to where she went to college, which happens to also be where I went to college, to learn something about herself.

I thought, "How can she learn anything about who she was from students now so much younger than her and so different. The school is different -- new teachers and buildings. What kind of insight could that offer her?"

I have no greater literary love than Wittman Ah Sing, the poet/playwright protagonist of Maxine Hong Kingston's novel Tripmaster Monkey: his fake book. He also appears in her Fifth Book of Peace. In my mind, I have dedicated this site to him.

In Tripmaster Monkey, while Wittman is working in the Toy Deparment, he thinks, "So it has come to this." Kingston inserts, "(Lew Welch, the Red Monk, says: now and again, stop and think, 'So it has come to this.')"